Saving Seafood

Mysterious Lobster Deaths In Cape Cod Raise Climate Change Concern

October 24, 2019 — Last month, lobstermen in Cape Cod Bay hauled up something disturbing. In one section of the bay, all of their traps were full of dead lobsters. Research biologists went to work trying to solve the mystery, and what they found suggests we may see more of this as the climate changes.

When the fishermen first started pulling up traps full of dead lobsters, their first call was to Beth Casoni of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association.

“As you can imagine, they were concerned — greatly concerned — because they didn’t know how they died or why they died,” Casoni said.

Over the next five days or so, she got more calls about dead animals in the traps.

“And it wasn’t just lobsters,” she said. “It was skate and flounder and ling, which is an eel.”

Casoni called the state Division of Marine Fisheries, which sent divers out to take a look at the seafloor in the area.

“The fishermen were fearful that there would have been a mass die-off and the bottom would be littered with carnage,” Casoni said. “And the division was happy to report that they did not see any mass die-off in the area.”

Read the full story at WGBH

Another outside crab species turns up in Maine waters

October 15, 2019 — A scientist with an environmental group says she has found what she believes is the first recorded appearance of a potentially damaging species of crab in Maine waters.

Marissa McMahan of the Massachusetts-based group Manomet said she located the smooth mud crab this month on a research trip. The crabs are typically found south of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. They can pose problems for aquaculture businesses because they prey on young oysters — a species of high economic value that is grown in Maine.

McMahan collected the single specimen, and it’s still alive. She said it’s too early to know how the animal ended up in the New Meadows River in West Bath, but it’s important to monitor for more of them.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

NOAA Fisheries Seeks Comments on Amendment 8 to the Atlantic Herring Fishery Management Plan

October 10, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries proposes establishing an Atlantic herring acceptable biological catch (ABC) control rule and prohibiting the use of midwater trawl gear in inshore waters from Canada to Connecticut.

Acceptable Biological Catch

The proposed ABC control rule is intended to ensure sustainable harvest of the Atlantic herring resource and account for Atlantic herring’s role as forage in the ecosystem. The control rule would limit fishing mortality to 80 percent of the fishing mortality rate to support maximum sustainable yield when Atlantic herring biomass is high and restrict fishing even further when biomass is low. The control rule would set Atlantic herring ABC for three years but would allow ABC to vary year-to-year with projected estimates of biomass.

Prohibiting Midwater Trawl Gear Inshore

This amendment would prohibit the use of midwater trawl gear inshore of the 12-nautical mile territorial sea boundary from Canada to Connecticut and inshore of 20 nautical miles off the east coast of Cape Cod (see below).

The proposed inshore midwater trawl restricted area is intended to minimize user group conflict as midwater trawl vessels overlap with other user groups (i.e., commercial fisheries, recreational fisheries, ecotourism) that rely on herring as forage. Moving midwater trawl effort offshore is intended to mitigate potential negative socioeconomic impacts on other user groups resulting from short duration, high volume herring removals by midwater trawl vessels and help ensure herring is available inshore for other users groups and predators of herring.

The proposed inshore restricted area may also have biological benefits if it minimizes catch of river herring and shad, reduces fishing pressure on the inshore component of the herring stock, and helps ensure herring are available to predators.

Read the full release here

Federal agency accused of misrepresenting views of its scientists in opening fishing grounds off Cape

October 4, 2019 — Without citing its sources, the group told the inspector general of the Commerce Department, which oversees the Fisheries Service, that it has “reason to believe” that there are e-mails, memos, and other internal communications that support their allegations that the agency’s officials were responsible for “blatantly mischaracterizing” the recommendations of its scientists on whether to open 3,000 square miles of popular feeding grounds for right whales to fishermen. The move, made under pressure from the fishing industry, outraged environmental advocates.

“An internal review process would likely reveal a disagreement within the agency, or a failure to take into account the advice of … its own right whale scientists, or true ‘agency expertise,’” Whitehouse wrote.

Officials at the Fisheries Service and the Commerce Department declined to comment on the complaint. An official at the inspector general’s office said he had yet to review the complaint.

Representatives of the scallop industry, which has been allowed to access the newly opened areas and has earned millions of dollars from their catch, said they were operating safely.

“Scallopers have been fishing for years, and there’s not a single known interaction with a right whale,” said Drew Minkiewicz, an attorney at the Fisheries Survival Fund in Washington D.C., which represents the scallop industry. “If we’re not impacting them, then why should we be restricted from the area?”

But scientists say that other fisheries, such as those that use fixed gear like lobster traps, pose a grave threat to right whales. That threat has increased in the waters off Nantucket, where more right whales have been spotted in recent years.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

New England council closes in on new herring limits

October 4, 2019 — Years of debate over New England herring are culminating in new fishing limits and an inshore midwater trawl restricted area to reduce user conflicts.

With an Oct. 21 deadline for public comment, fishing and environmental groups are pushing for NMFS approval of Amendment 8 to the New England Fishery Management Council’s herring plan.

If approved by the agency, Amendment 8 would prohibit the use of midwater trawl gear inshore of the 12-mile territorial sea limit, from the Maine-Canada border south to the border of Rhode Island and Connecticut. Off eastern Cape Cod, the restricted area would bump out to 20 miles, within 30-minute squares 114 and 99.

John Pappalardo, CEO of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance that pushed hard for the changes, said the future impact is uncertain.

“The first and most obvious thing is what we won’t see: the lights of midwater trawlers, factory boats working in pairs, wiping out schools of forage fish like herring close to shore,” Pappalardo wrote in the association’s Sept. 25 newsletter.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

MASSACHUSETTS: Truro lobsterman says rules to protect right whales costly to his business

September 30, 2019 — Cheryl Souza is ending her lobster sales after October.

But third-generation lobsterman Billy Souza, as it turns out, is considering quitting as well.

“It’s all the whale issues,” Souza said. Unlike the lobstering in the days of Souza’s grandfather, Frank Souza, and his father, William Souza, the current generation fishing off Cape Cod is under an intense and unique scrutiny. That scrutiny is directly linked to the increasing focus by federal and state regulators on imperiled North Atlantic right whales, which are dying or suffering debilitating injuries due to entanglement in fishing rope.

“We have the whale watch boats here, and we have the Division of Marine Fisheries that does flyovers all the time,” said Souza, 66. “The whales could get entangled anywhere in the world, but there’s so many eyes on them here it looks like we’re the bad guys and we’re not.” On any given early spring day, at least two to three right whale research vessels can be found in Cape Cod Bay, where the whales feed through May and then migrate northward to Canadian waters.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Watch as a response team helps partially untangle a right whale

August 8, 2019 — A right whale received some extra help off the coast of Cape Cod as a response team partially disentangled him Aug. 2.

“Despite a horrific entanglement, the whale was highly mobile,” according to the Center for Coastal Studies.

This particular whale, a male, was initially discovered July 4 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada. He was spotted again July 19, and a team from the New England Aquarium was able to attach a telemetry buoy to the whale to track his movements, the center said.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

CCS Team Frees Minke Whale from Entanglement, Shark

August 7, 2019 — The Center for Coastal Studies’ Marine Animal Entanglement Response Team freed an entangled minke whale last Thursday off Rockport and saved it from a great white shark.

The 18-foot whale was anchored by gear with rope through its mouth and around its tail.

The whale had a deep cut from the rope and minor bleeding had attracted a great white.

A video showing the extent of the entanglement can be viewed below.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

MASSACHUSETTS: Shark detection technology gets quiet rollout on Outer Cape

August 5, 2019 — With little fanfare, shark detection technology on Cape Cod took a small step forward last month off Newcomb Hollow Beach, the site of last year’s fatal shark attack on body boarder Arthur Medici.

Cape Cod and regional public safety officials have been hoping for years to employ a kind of souped-up version of what they already have, an acoustic receiver attached to a buoy that can not only detect signals from tagged great white sharks but relay an instantaneous alert to lifeguards and beach administrators.

One such device was deployed off Newcomb Hollow, state shark researcher Gregory Skomal said, and two more to be placed at Head of the Meadow Beach in Truro and at Nauset Beach in Orleans.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

More than 150 great white shark sightings logged off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, since June

August 5, 2019 — There have been more than 150 great white shark sightings since June off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a popular East Coast vacation spot, according to scientists.

This week alone, more than 20 great white shark sightings logged off the Cape, prompting three days of beach closures in a row beginning Tuesday.

The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy’s sharktivity app indicates that there have been more that 161 shark sightings off the coast of Massachusetts since June 1. The same shark can be spotted multiple times, scientists note.

Read the full story at NBC News